


Go Down the Path

by marginalia



Category: Heroes (TV)
Genre: Community: choc_fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-09-19
Updated: 2007-09-19
Packaged: 2018-10-03 09:23:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10241522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marginalia/pseuds/marginalia
Summary: "Do you know anything?" they ask. "Is there anywhere else we can look? Did he say anything?"Does he have any secrets is the question under their words. Things his family wouldn't know."No, nothing," he says. Except that he's a super hero, he thinks. Except that he is special.





	

**Author's Note:**

> During Ando's first timeline (s1, ep1-2)

The last words are all Ando can remember, and it's the closest they've been to a fight. The mocking title "Super Hiro!" thrown out across the street, and Hiro turning away, walking off through shadow and neon.

Ando doesn't remember immediately, of course. He fumes all the way home. He's in the right. Nothing good comes of being different, of standing out. Ando ducks, covers, flies under the radar. On the outside, at least, he is determined to match. He even cultivates the right vices, a few hours a week on a website or two, girls or gambling, simple enough for anyone to track. He is always on time. He is the same. They will be the same. Each day will follow the rhythm preordained by the city, by the subway, by Yamagato Industries.

Except the next morning, the train is precisely on time. It is not fourteen seconds late. It is not fourteen seconds early. And Hiro is not there to ride it with him.

He thinks little of it at first. Hiro is probably ill, and Ando has a day to get through, that much more difficult without enthusiastic interruptions. He fills one day and one night, and then again and again for three days. He starts to wonder, and when their boss calls him in on the morning of the fourth day, he isn't surprised.

They've talked to his family. They've looked in his home, in hospitals, in morgues.

"Do you know anything?" they ask. "Is there anywhere else we can look? Did he say anything?"

_Does he have any secrets_ is the question under their words. _Things his family wouldn't know_.

"No, nothing," he says. _Except that he's a super hero_ , he thinks. _Except that he is special_.

He begins to regret.

He begins to hope.

Ando takes a role in the search effort, everything they'll allow him to do and then some. He puts posters everywhere, even in his cubicle, which is a little silly, he knows. He looks at Hiro's face on his wall and thinks about wanting to be different, thinks about being different together, thinks about bending space and time.

Sometimes he wants to apologize, sometimes he wants to yell, sometimes he wants to turn his back like Hiro did in that alley three, four, five weeks ago. Sometimes he stays late at the office, just in case of something. Anything. Sometimes he doesn't know what he wants.

He focuses on the clock, and though the second hand sometimes goes by painfully slowly he knows it's not the same. He wonders if he should have paid closer attention when Hiro told him about time travel. He thinks he should have paid closer attention to everything. He didn't know it would end so soon.

For five weeks, he doesn't know. For five weeks, he waits.

On the morning of November 9th, the phone rings, and it is Hiro and a policeman and a complicated story about New York. Ando's heart starts to race. He spins away from his desk and the office, away from distraction, pushing five weeks of twisted, white-hot _difference_ through the phone.

Suddenly, they fall silent. "Hello? Hiro?" Ando asks, and his words come back at him as cannonballs, a blast behind them of unimaginable noise, distorted through the international line. He holds the phone away, half expecting light and smoke to pour from it. He sets it back in its cradle, and lays his hands palm-down on the desk, bracing himself, taking one deep breath, then another.

They will come for him soon. They will tell him nothing he does not know already. He will be strong. He will be the same.

Going is simple. Coming back is hard.


End file.
